161 Occasional Paper AUGUST 2018
Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India
ARKA BISWAS KARTIK BOMMAKANTI YOGESH JOSHI Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India
ARKA BISWAS KARTIK BOMMAKANTI YOGESH JOSHI ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Arka Biswas was an Associate Fellow at ORF's Strategic Studies Programme and a Visiting Fellow at Stimson Center. He is a Physics graduate and has a Master's Degree in International Relations. His work has appeared in the Washington Quarterly, Comparative Strategy, Foreign Policy, and The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Kartik Bommakanti is an Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at ORF, New Delhi. He specialises in space-military, nuclear and Asia-Pacific security issues. He has published in policy monographs and peer-reviewed journals.
Yogesh Joshi is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University. He has a PhD in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and he specialises in Indian foreign and security policy. He has held fellowships at George Washington University, King's College London, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC.
ISBN : 978-93-88262-07-1
2018 Observer Research Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from ORF. Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India
ABSTRACT
The extant scholarship on India's nuclear doctrine, while problematising the credibility deficit in the strategy of massive retaliation, fails to provide a policy alternative. This study examines the alternative of flexible response available for India and makes an assessment of whether it provides a solution to this problem in India's nuclear doctrine. Even when flexible response is often cited in India's strategic circles as a likely alternative, the contours of such a strategy have hardly been deliberated. This paper seeks to develop the concept of flexible response as India confronts a rapidly changing strategic environment. It charts out the various parameters on which an alternative nuclear doctrine of flexible response can potentially be based. However, such a policy-shift must correspond with India's deterrence objectives and its nuclear wherewithal.
I. INTRODUCTION
Is India's nuclear deterrent strategy of 'massive retaliation' credible? Various experts not only from India have critiqued the strategy on a number of factors, saying that it lacks credibility. These criticisms are based on an interpretation of the strategy as a threat of nuclear retaliation against population and industrial centres using strategic nuclear weapons. However, there are a number of reasons why New Delhi is unlikely to follow up on such a threat. First, some have argued
ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 161 • AUGUST 2018 1 Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India that the policy of targeting civilians with nuclear weapons in response to a tactical use of nuclear weapon by an adversary in battlefield is inhumane. Second, the burden of escalation of nuclear conflict from tactical to strategic levels involving an all-out nuclear war will fall solely on India under this strategy. Third, and perhaps the most important reason, is that a massive nuclear response by India would invite retaliation on a similar scale and nature from Pakistan; no civilian government in New Delhi will be willing to bear such costs. India's strategy of massive retaliation therefore does not appear to be credible enough.
Exploiting this credibility-deficit vis-a-vis India's massive retaliation strategy, Pakistan has adopted a first use policy and has lowered its nuclear threshold by introducing tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs). Because of perceptions that New Delhi would not follow up on its threat of massive retaliation against, say, a first use of a TNW by Pakistan on Indian soldiers in Pakistan's own territory, Rawalpindi has managed to apparently deter India from launching a variety of conventional attacks. This 'instability-instability' paradox, to use the words of Paul Kapur, allows Pakistan to continue its proxy war against India while blocking the latter's ability to punish Pakistan through conventional means. 1
Analysts, therefore, have called on India to renounce massive retaliation as the country's nuclear deterrent strategy. The extant scholarship on India's nuclear doctrine does problematise the credibility deficit but barely provides a policy alternative. The requirement is clearly for an alternative blueprint for a more effective nuclear deterrent strategy. Flexible response is often mentioned as a viable alternative, but literature suggests that there are varying interpretations of 'flexible response' and, consequently, of its
2 ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 161 • AUGUST 2018 Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India advantages and disadvantages. As New Delhi ponders the credibility- deficit of massive retaliation, the challenge is to establish parameters that will guide policymakers in constructing a flexible response alternative. Parameters will have to be informed by the varied interpretations of the advantages and disadvantages of flexible response, re-contextualised to meet New Delhi's strategic interests, given its technical capabilities. India may have to re-examine its retaliatory strike strategy that envisions the use of strategic nuclear weapons in response to Pakistan's first use of tactical nuclear weapons.
This paper is an attempt to chart the contours of the debate and the policy alternatives that India should weigh as it prepares to make its nuclear deterrent strategy more credible. It argues that for flexible response to serve as a lynchpin in India's nuclear doctrine, the country must begin exploring its contours. The paper, therefore, seeks to develop the concept of 'flexible response' in the Indian strategic environment. It charts out certain parameters on which an alternative doctrine of flexible response can potentially be based. Such a policy- shift must correspond with India's deterrence objectives and its nuclear wherewithal.
The paper is divided into two major sections. The first deliberates on massive retaliation, explains the concept and its origins, its application in the Indian context, and its weaknesses. The second section focuses on flexible response as an alternative, discussing its origins in the Cold War era, and its relevance in contemporary India. It examines the possibilities and the challenges of a flexible deterrent posture that India can, and should, adopt. The paper concludes that even when officially India maintains its policy of massive retaliation, New Delhi must debate extensively the advantages and weaknesses of shifting towards a flexible response strategy.
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A caveat is in order: the debate being engaged with here is strictly over India's declaratory doctrine. Recent scholarship suggests that it is the nuclear posture the capabilities, deployment patterns, and command and control procedures a state uses to manage and operationalize its nuclear weapons capability that reflects what a state can do with its nuclear weapons and thus captures a state's ability to deter various kinds of conflicts.2 The examination of India's nuclear posture thus becomes important in assessing whether India can employ the retaliatory strategies of massive retaliation or flexible response (and its interpretations), for instance. The current nuclear posture of India is unclear about what New Delhi intends to do with its nuclear weapons and how the adversary perceives the Indian state's intentions. Does it view them primarily as instruments of deterrence, or of warfighting? As William Kaufmann argues in his analysis of the requirements of deterrence, intentions of a state forms an important element of the credibility of its nuclear retaliatory strategy as a tool of deterrence.3 India's declaratory doctrine and how experts from India, Pakistan and the US read it, becomes an important indicator of the credibility of India's nuclear deterrence as it reflects the country's intentions. It is the reason that while India's capabilities and procedures to operationalise those capabilities are considered, the study focuses more on the compatibility of massive retaliation and flexible response, on one hand, and India's intentions in its declaratory doctrine and the interpretations of the doctrine.
II. MASSIVE RETALIATION AND NFU: PILLARS OF INDIA'S NUCLEAR DOCTRINE
The two pillars of India's nuclear doctrine are Massive Retaliation (MR) and No First Use (NFU). Following the 1998 nuclear tests, a Draft Nuclear Doctrine (DND) was unveiled by New Delhi in August 1999.
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The doctrine prepared by a group of mostly civilian strategists of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) advocated a posture of punitive retaliation (PR) in case deterrence collapses. PR was adopted largely in response to Pakistan's attack at Kargil that resulted in a three- month-long war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Pakistan thought it could pursue a limited aims conventional war to seize territory under the cover of nuclear weapons, exposing the inadequacy of the doctrinal retaliation of adequate response . This prompted a rethinking of the form of retaliation enshrined in the Indian nuclear doctrine.4 Although, this change remained inexplicable, it nevertheless proffered flexibility to respond at a time and place of India's choosing. However, again, in November 1999, the Indian government shifted the extent of the retaliatory punishment with assured retaliation (AR) in the doctrine. In 2003, there was another change a shift from AR to MR. Between November 1999 and 2003, multiple external factors induced this shift between assured retaliation of November 1999, and finally to MR in 2003. The first was the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States, followed by the 13 December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. The latter precipitated a massive military mobilisation by India in a quest to punish Pakistan for sponsoring the attack, but India failed to mete out punishment through coercive diplomacy and only secured rhetorical assurance from Pakistan to prevent terrorism against India.5
The DND then claimed, India's policy is of credible minimum nuclear deterrence. Credible minimum deterrence would require sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces ; a robust command and control system ; effective intelligence and early warning capabilities, comprehensive planning and training for operations in line with the strategy : and the will to employ nuclear forces and weapons. In order to meet the test of minimum deterrence, the
ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 161 • AUGUST 2018 5 Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India doctrine envisioned a nuclear force structure consisting of a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets. Effective deterrence also entailed a capability to convert peacetime deployment into employable forces in the shortest possible time, and to survive any significant degradation (meaning first use or strike) by the enemy and to retaliate effectively.6
The subsequent revision and release of the official doctrine in 2003 introduced the word massive in response to a nuclear attack, instead of the phrase massive retaliation commonly used in Cold War parlance as the basis of India's employment of nuclear weapons. Despite the ambiguity in the phrase, retaliate massively to inflict unacceptable damage , some experts have argued that India's massive retaliation is non-credible. The crisis in India's nuclear doctrine is due to a strong perception within an increasingly vocal section of the country's strategic establishment that MR has failed to prevent Pakistan- sponsored terrorism. If anything, Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, views itself as immune from Indian conventional retribution for its sponsorship of sub-conventional violence.8
The demand for changing the weight of retaliation enshrined in the current doctrine has come about following the terror attacks carried out by Pakistani terrorists on India's financial capital, Mumbai in November 2008, which led to a three-day siege. India's non-response to the attacks was seen by Pakistan as another instance of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal deterring Indian retribution. For those demanding a revision to the doctrine, another critical precipitating factor is the shifts in Pakistan's nuclear posture, particularly its development of TNWs. Some strategists have proposed a conventional strike against Rawalpindi's use of terrorist proxies. A rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal supports Pakistan's introduction of TNWs, which is now
6 ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 161 • AUGUST 2018 Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India plutonium-based; this constrains India's conventional response. Indeed, this is the core of the challenge confronting India's strategic elites, and it has divided the Indian strategic establishment. The balance of the debate is between two schools of thought: the nuclear minimalists or moderates, and the nuclear maximalists or expansionists.9
India's nuclear doctrine has come under a two-pronged attack first is the diminishing credibility of its retaliatory threat in the form of MR and the second is India's policy of NFU. A corollary to this increasing unease with India's nuclear doctrine is the inadequate expansion of India's conventional forces along the border and Line of Control (LoC) against Pakistan. The growing gap between Indian and Pakistani conventional forces presents challenges inviting Indian analysts to consider a revision.10
There are three major schools of thought within India's strategic establishment, about shifting the country's nuclear doctrine from MR back to PR. The central themes of the debate are credibility, risk, weight of retaliatory punishment (massive or proportional), and NFU. There are three essential groups within the Indian debate. The first group, dubbed the sceptics , consist ironically of both nuclear abolitionists and nuclear maximalists, and stand in opposition to MR and NFU. The second group consists of minus MR status quoists that call for preserving NFU, but seek abandonment of MR. Finally, a third subset of nuclear minimalists, dubbed the status quoists , support retaining the existing doctrine (See table 1).
Table 1: Competing Schools on Indian Nuclear Doctrine Sceptics (Maximalists and Abolitionists) Abandon No First Use (NFU) and Massive Retaliation (MR), introduce Punitive Retaliation (PR), and retain ambiguity in retaliation. Minus MR Status Quoists (Minimalists) Retain NFU, abandon MR and introduce Punitive Retaliation (PR). Status Quoists (Minimalists) Retain NFU and MR.
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The sceptics of MR and NFU claim it is deterministic and strains credibility, as it defies the logic of threatening nuclear annihilation against an adversary to deter its employment of TNWs against an advancing [Indian] formation. 11 The sceptic view also contests the merits of massive retaliation in response to a Pakistani tactical nuclear attack on the ground that it violates the principle of proportionality. They prefer replacing it with punitive retaliation and calibrating the weight of retaliation. Massive retaliation and minimum deterrence are incompatible,12 simply because a limited Indian nuclear force cannot service a massive retaliatory posture.13 Further, the sceptics contend, NFU has value only during times of peace, and is something of a hoax, which New Delhi will quickly jettison in wartime.14 India cannot be confident of absorbing a devastating nuclear first strike and then inflict substantially devastating riposte, as the survivability of its retaliatory capability is suspect. Second, India's crisis management capacities are its Achilles heel: if India struggles to effectively manage as predictable an occurrence as adverse weather, how will it cope with a surprise first nuclear attack against its cities?15 Further, sceptics see NFU inviting a first strike from the opponent thereby decapitating India's Command, Control and Communication (C3) system and paralysing decision- making.16 While a vocal minority oppose NFU, it remains a central feature of India's nuclear doctrine. However, the canisterising of existing Indian land-based missile capabilities such as the Agni, at least, notionally makes possible an Indian first strike against Pakistan.17 The latter view is strongly contested because India simply does not possess the numerical strength in warheads to successfully execute a first strike against Pakistan, let alone maintain any residual capability against China.18 Therefore, a successful Indian first strike is a remote possibility and more in the domain of speculation.
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The second group, minus MR status quoist , calls for a partial revision of the Indian nuclear doctrine. They contend that punitive retaliation replace massive , because the latter limits India's retaliatory options ; however, dropping India's NFU policy would be unwise.19 A change in NFU could lead to pre-emption by India and Pakistan.20 This group contends MR was not credible even during the Cold War21 and that India substitute massive with punitive as it was in the 1999 DND.22 An escalatory nuclear war is a better way to prevent Pakistan from viewing its TNW-capability as a neutraliser against Indian conventional advantages or strength.23 MR makes the Pakistanis believe that a nuclear war can be fought and controlled.24 While a vocal minority of sceptics oppose NFU, it remains a central feature of India's nuclear doctrine.
NFU signalled to the adversary that India could both withstand a nuclear first strike and retaliate punitively. Secondly, it was an optimal compromise between India's commitment to nuclear disarmament and its nuclear security imperatives. 25 Punitive retaliation , as opposed to massive , implies a quest to return to a more flexible and proportionate form of retaliation, which was enshrined in the DND. This is important, as some external observers have pointed out that India's move away from massive retaliation to one driven by ambiguity and flexibility and revert to a punitive retaliation threat enshrined in the 1999 DND.26 Sceptics seek reversion to India's ambiguous posture on nuclear use, which was lost in 1999 when the DND was made public by the Vajpayee-led government.27 To be sure, the abolitionist wing among the sceptics sees ambiguity as bequeathing an opportunity to de-operationalise Indian nuclear forces, representing a step toward disarmament, whereas the maximalist wing sees the benefits of ambiguity in providing room for shifting doctrine and
ORF OCCASIONAL PAPER # 161 • AUGUST 2018 9 Contra Massive Retaliation: Possible Trajectories of a Flexible Response Deterrent Strategy for India posture for new warfighting missions and a commensurately larger and diversified nuclear force.28
For their part, the third group, the status quoists, have cautioned against any change, calling for the retention of India's existing posture of retaliating massively against any type of nuclear attack. In 2013, the imperative for sustaining the threat of massive retaliation was articulated by the Chairman of the NSAB, Shyam Saran under the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Saran noted, [If India] is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary A limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level Pakistan would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to do. 29 Other status quoists share this view, rejecting the argument that a nuclear exchange can actually be controlled.30 These experts contend that massive retaliation serves the purpose of creating uncertainty in the minds of the adversary and completely reject assigning a warfighting role to nuclear weapons.31 Indeed, it represents a generic and substantive critique against flexible response.32 Therefore, India's focus ought to be on improving its delivery capabilities and ensuring their survival. Ultimately, the onus of initiating an attack and the consequent escalation is on Pakistan.33 Assured retaliation is an imperative, because India's nuclear arsenal has only retributive value, as nuclear weapons play a highly limited role in Indian military strategy. Consequently, its doctrine reflects a strategic view of nuclear weapons, undergirded by minimalism, credibility, and survivability,34 which contrasts sharply with Pakistan's nuclear posture visibly demonstrated by its development of TNWs and Rawalpindi's quest to conflate nuclear weapons with sub-conventional conflict.35
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Yet other status quoists also draw attention to the importance of risk. The risk of nuclear use is sufficient to deter and not the certitude of second-strike retaliation to ensure deterrence,36 which parts ways from the position of assured retaliation advocates. Although, a minority holds the view that it only takes a low number of nuclear weapons to meet India's deterrence requirements; it represents the most minimalistic conception of nuclear deterrence, which India's growing capabilities do not reflect. Officially and as of this writing, the Modi Government since assuming office in 2014 has refused to bring about a shift in India's nuclear doctrine, despite the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) statements both in their campaign rallies in 2014 and in the party manifesto, that it will review India's posture once it comes to power.37 Yet covert shifts may have occurred in India's employment strategy and posture as Shivshankar Menon suggested in his memoir: